Ammar Campa-Najjar

Ammar Campa-Najjar (24 February 1989-) was an American Democratic Party political candidate who ran for California's 50th district in the US House of Representatives in 2018, losing to Republican incumbent Duncan D. Hunter.

Biography
Ammar Campa-Najjar was born in San Diego, California in 1989, the son of a Palestinian Muslim refugee father, Yasser Najjar, and a Catholic Mexican immigrant mother, Abigail Campa; he was raised as a Christian. He grew up in Gaza for a few years, studying at a Catholic school there; he suffered back burns and a fractured thigh when an Israeli military hummer crashed head-on into his family's car during a military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In August 2001, reluctantly leaving the father behind, Campa-Najjar and his mother returned to America (living in a Hispanic barrio in San Diego), and the Islamic school which he attended was vandalized and declared unsafe to study or pray in after an Islamophobic attack following 9/11. In 2008, he volunteered on Barack Obama's election campaign, and he left behind his mother and younger brother to head to Washington DC and pursue a political career. In 2018, he decided to run for the US House of Representatives as the representative from California's 50th district (including San Diego), but he lost the election to Republican incumbent Duncan D. Hunter with 48.3% of the vote to Hunter's 51.7%.